cover image Thinking of Home: William Faulkner's Letters to His Mother and Father, 1918-1925

Thinking of Home: William Faulkner's Letters to His Mother and Father, 1918-1925

William Faulkner. W. W. Norton & Company, $22.95 (253pp) ISBN 978-0-393-03081-5

This collection of previously unpublished letters, which Faulkner wrote to his parents when in his early 20s, covers the novelist's first travels to New Haven, New York City, Paris and New Orleans as well as a 1918 stint in the Royal Air Force. The correspondence, edited by Faulkner scholar Watson ( The Snopes Dilemma ), documents the young writer's yearning for his home in Oxford, Miss., even as he took pleasure in his widening horizons, commenting in chatty anecdotes on new sights, foods and adventures. The letters also show his constant casual use of ethnic and racial slurs when describing the people he met and observed. Faulkner aficionados and scholars will find the accounts of his early attempts to publish short stories and a first novel illuminating. (Jan.)